page_title: Museum Boerhaave
section_title: 16th-17th Century
hierarchical_section_title: Museum Boerhaave / Collection / 16th-17th Century
caption_attribution_description: English: One of the first pendulum clocks designed by the inventor of the pendulum clock, French scientist Christiaan Huygens, and his treatise on the pendulum, Horologii Oscillatorii published in 1673, on display in Museum Boerhaave in Leiden, Netherlands. This may be Huygens second pendulum clock, which was also finished in 1673 and is shown on the open page of the book. In it Huygens attempted to make the swing of the pendulum isochronous using "cycloidal cheeks" of metal (shown on page) to confine the suspension cord and give the pendulum a cycloidal trajectory. Huygens claimed an accuracy of 10 seconds per day.
context_page_description: Rijksmuseum Boerhaave is a museum of the history of science and medicine, based in Leiden, Netherlands. The museum hosts a collection of historical scientific instruments from all disciplines, but mainly from medicine, physics, and astronomy.
  The museum is located in a building that was originally a convent in central Leiden. It includes a reconstructed traditional anatomical theatre. It also has many galleries that include the apparatus with which Heike Kamerlingh Onnes first liquefied helium, the electromagnet equipment used by Wander Johannes de Haas for his low-temperature research, and an example of the Leiden jar, among many other objects in the extensive collection.
  The museum is named after Herman Boerhaave, a Dutch physician and botanist who was famous in Europe for his teaching at Leiden and lived to a great age, receiving brilliant students from all over Europe, including Peter the Great, Voltaire and Linnaeus.
context_section_description: 0 Museum Foyer
  Gapers (wooden heads miming the swallowing of pills) and other shop signs for pharmacies and druggists. Also a 'dictionary of health': a tall book-shaped wooden chest (1660) filled with simples (basic substances used in medicine).
  1 Leiden Anatomical Theater
  The room shows a reconstruction (1988) of the Theatrum Anatomicum (anatomical theatre) (built 1596). A richly decorated instrument chest (1670) which belonged to the Leiden surgeon's guild. A small collection of objects (largely Egyptian antiquities) that survived from the now gone Leiden Theatrum (one of the oldest museums of Europe) are shown as well. On the wall three paintings: one depicting the magistrates of the Catharina and Caecilia Hospitals (the latter now houses the museum), a second showing a Prussian peasant from whom a 10-inch sword, swallowed in a drinking bout, has surgically been removed, a third showing renowned surgeon and designer of medical instruments Cornelis Solingen (1680). One of Solingen's inventions (part of the collection) was a screw to unindent a soldiers skull who had been hit by a bullet. Often in those days bullets did not fully penetrate a skull, merely deformed it.
  2 Drawn from life
  Four large allegoric paintings (± 1610) show in stages how the appreciation of a patient for his physician declines, from being a true savior when the illness is at its height, towards being a devil when the bill has been delivered. Three solid figures of Saints Cosmas and Damian, patrons of doctors and pharmacists. Six anatomical books and drawings (1520–1570) and six books on herbs (1480–1590) testify how in the Renaissance there was an urge to study life diligently and not take traditional beliefs for granted. A large collection of baked and painted apothecary jars (1550–1650) and (often ornamented) cast-iron and bronze mortars (1350-1700).
  3 The Golden Age
caption: Spring driven pendulum clock, designed by Huygens, built by instrument maker Salomon Coster (1657), and manuscript Horologium Oscillatorium
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